At age 16, Luna Acosta Garcia has seen firsthand the importance of access to health care for her family and neighbors.

“I know how much of a difference a family doctor makes in small communities,” said the rising high school junior who was raised in Texas and now lives in the small Colorado town of Gypsum. “A physician like that can make such a big impact in a small place.”

Luna was one of 60 students from around the state who participated in a weeklong camp in mid-July that brought them to the Anschutz Medical Campus.

The camp, which began in 2022 with 42 students, encourages students from underrepresented groups to pursue careers in medicine, especially emergency care, and to take their skills back to rural areas.

The students include teens like Luna, who come from rural areas, along with those who are racial or ethnic minorities or identify as LGBTQ+.

“Our goal is to begin working with these students when they are young and ensure they have opportunities, internships and mentors,” said Colorado Area Health Education Center Director Dr. Josina Romero O’Connell. “We want to create a pipeline for them so that they gain confidence, along with developing the necessary skills, to become healthcare professionals.”

The camp is sponsored by the education center’s HOPE program, which stands for Health Occupations Promoting Equity Institute.

O’Connell was raised in rural northern New Mexico and receiving little encouragement to fulfill her dream to become a doctor. She then raised three children and worked as a teacher before entering medical school at the age of 44.

“I tell them ‘I am you,’” said O’Connell, who is also a University of Colorado assistant professor of family medicine. “We don’t tell them what they can or can’t do. We say: ‘You tell us what you want to do, and we will help you.’’’

At HOPE camp, students gain hands-on skills that can help save lives

HOPE camp participants spent one warm July day on the Anschutz Campus where they experienced simulated traumatic medical events and learned how emergency medical care providers save lives. The high-schoolers learned CPR, how to apply tourniquets, intubate a patient and check a person’s pulse, among other skills emergency responders regularly use.

“The best thing about today is seeing ER medicine in action and in an in-depth, expansive way,” Luna said.

Their education took place in anything but a typical classroom.

Instead, the students brought medicine to life thanks to a long red and white trailer that houses the UCHealth Simulation Unit, a new transportable state-of-the art teaching facility.

The unit has trained about 1,000 health care professionals and other participants like the HOPE students since it began operating last fall. It travels around the state providing EMS and trauma training for rural and urban emergency response teams.

Two key players in the training sessions are lifelike mannequins named Tony and Simon. Medical pros who run the unit use the mannequins, sophisticated medical equipment and various computer monitors to simulate traumatic events like car accidents, injuries from falls and deep wound lacerations that need immediate emergency response for patients to survive.

“It’s amazing,” said Dr. Angela Wright, UCHealth medical director for EMS and pre-hospital care for the metro Denver region.

She is also an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

“This is a highly realistic way for students to see the different situations they might be exposed to as an emergency healthcare provider. There is a great need for this type of education in rural areas throughout the state.”

Small towns often lack medical, dental and mental health services

Disparities in health care access are far greater in rural parts of the state as compared to those in urban areas. The Colorado Area Health Education Center cites the following shortages in rural areas:

• 95% fewer psychologists.
• 91% fewer primary care physicians.
• 80% fewer dental providers.

In addition, rural areas face other disparities including:

• 51% of rural counties have no licensed clinical social workers.
• 34% of rural counties have no licensed psychologists.
• 24 rural counties have no licensed addiction counselors.
• 5 rural counties have no dentists.

The HOPE program hopes to inspire future health care professionals who can counter these sobering statistics.

The high school students filled the UCHealth trailer, which is split into two parts and is identical to the back of an ambulance and a hospital trauma room.

There, they worked on eerily lifelike Tony and Simon, performing CPR, taking pulses and cutting into the dummy throats to provide air. Tubes and wires hooked up to real monitors let the students know how successful they were in saving the “patients”, which can breathe, sweat, urinate and even suffer a seizure.

“He was staring at me one minute and then next one, I was sticking a tracheotomy tube in him,” said 17-year-old Meeker High School student Joelle Soler of Tony. “I loved how I could be immersed in the moment learning how to do all of these things.”

HOPE camp helps create tomorrow’s medical professionals

Madison Craig, a 16-year-old soon-to-be junior from Pueblo, enjoyed learning CPR while 15-year-old Tava Gilpin Reynolds from Durango is interested in helping patients after they leave the hospital and wants to become a pediatric physical or occupational therapist.

Daniel Gutierrez, 15, lives in Avon and starts sophomore year in the fall. He is interested in becoming a surgeon and said his parents are proud of him for setting high goals.

“I like medicine, and I like learning all about this,” he said. “Today was the first time I did CPR. It felt weird, but also very cool at the same time to do new things.”

Sixteen-year-old Alycia Chavez of Alamosa wants to study neurology and is fascinated by how the brain works. She was most impressed with the realism of cutting into the mannequin to intubate it.

“It was a little terrifying, but exciting,” she said.

For 17-year-old Savanna Ingleton of Widefield whose grandparents encouraged her to enroll in the camp, she liked working with the ultrasound machine as she is interested in pediatric medicine.

“I have gotten to explore a lot of things so many kids my age haven’t,” she said.

As for Luna, she has her sights set on becoming double board certified in emergency and family medicine. That would not just be an accomplishment for her personally but more importantly, a huge boon to the patients in the small town that she plans to return to when she is ready to care for patients.

“I want to be able to provide the most help to my community.”